Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,93

could imagine what the Senior Council would be saying about it if I accused them, too. Too dangerous, could cause havoc, can’t let those monsters have it, we’ll be able to lock it away and keep it safe, harrumph, harrumph.

“Should we be victorious, that will be the real fight, you know,” Mab said. Her gaze, always penetrating, made me squirm. “Who shall possess the Eye?”

Outside, said Eye filled the night with light and destruction again. I heard the building fall this time, clearly. Hell. It was only a couple of blocks to the north. It might have been the one with Bradley’s day care in it.

“I can wreck buildings just fine all by myself,” I said, and tapped the center of my forehead. “And I got three eyes already. What the hell do I want with another big ugly one?”

“What indeed,” Mab said, as if I hadn’t spoken. She closed her eyes and said, “I confess, it has been long since I have taken the field in earnest, my Knight.” She showed me her teeth. “I think this shall be . . . fun.”

I blinked. “Fun?”

Mab opened her eyes, and they twinkled. Just twinkled.

And then she turned in a wave of silken hair and starlight and strode out of the Bean and onto the battlefield.

“Hell’s bells,” I muttered after her.

I didn’t hear it, of course. But my mind provided me with a perfect reproduction of Murph’s drily amused chuckle.

I turned back to Murph’s remains and touched her cheek with the backs of the fingers of my left hand. Then paused.

Her Sig, her favorite handgun, was still riding in its shoulder holster beneath her coat.

Heroes are traditionally buried with their arms.

But this fight was still going.

I took the gun from its holster, very gently. It wasn’t a large weapon, but it fit my hand nicely enough as a backup.

“Backup,” I said. “You mind if I borrow her for a while?”

Murph couldn’t say anything.

But with a whisper, where I’d moved it to get the gun, her coat fell open a little more, showing the spare magazines she had prepared.

“Thanks, Murph,” I whispered.

I took the magazines and Backup.

And then I stalked out to fight for the city.

Chapter

Twenty-five

I walked out of the Bean and into the soundtrack of a B horror movie: The Fomor forces didn’t use drums to send signals in the haze.

They used clicks.

I supposed that made sense. Drums wouldn’t sound like much underwater. But two rocks banged together are two rocks banged together. I just hoped that they weren’t enough like dolphins to be able to see through the haze using the clicks, too. I didn’t think so, since dolphins had an absolutely enormous biological investment in their natural sonar, but I’d had unpleasant surprises before.

I strode through the ranks of the Sidhe cohort, and this time there were no games. They made a path for me with crisp precision. But I could sense their eagerness as I passed by. The Winter Court makes very little distinction between sex and violence. Their confrontation with me earlier had been foreplay, but now they were ready for the main event.

Normally, before a big fight, I felt as intensely as they did, if differently. The adrenaline. The fear. The eagerness to get it over with.

This time I didn’t.

It wasn’t that I didn’t feel anything. I felt plenty. I just couldn’t care too much about it, in the face of my loss. That was dangerous, both for me and for the people I was protecting. Battles are not graded on a curve, ever. You survive or you don’t. And everyone you’ll ever face in a battle to the death is undefeated.

I had to get my head into the game.

I strode across the park to the pavilion, where Sanya and the volunteers waited, and as I went, the scarlet-hazed air filled with eerie clicks that sounded hideously organic. They came echoing through the heavy air, from multiple directions, north and south alike.

The Alphas fell in around me as I came to the volunteers, and Butters appeared from the haze to silently take up a position behind me and to my right, where he could watch my back. Or stab me in it if I went all monstery, I supposed.

Good.

“Harry,” Sanya said cheerfully. One of the volunteers, damned if it wasn’t Randy, was busy wrapping a bandage around the big Russian’s head, to secure the pad over his torn and bloodied ear. “You are just in time, da?” He gestured out at the unseen sources of the